LaTeX

The first thing that you'll maybe want to install is LaTeX, because I believe that everyone of us uses it to typeset serious things. Well, installing that is easy and it works well. You can simply hit the MacTeX webpage, and download the package (MacTeX.mpkg.zip, quite big, or go to Smaller Packages and get the smaller version). You launch it, and it will do everything.

You can manage the packages which are installed by using the command-line utility tlmgr or by its Mac GUI Mactlmgr, which I highly recommend, since it will allow you to easily update packages and install new one without firing up the terminal.

What to use to actually write LaTeX code? There are thousand of programs to do that. What I suggest is Aquamacs, which is a Mac Os X version of Emacs. It has AUCTeX built in, a plug-in that allows you to do thousands of things, from auto-completion, shortcuts, and a lot of stuff you'll love.

Why use Aquamacs, and not the pure Emacs? Well, because Aquamacs it's Mac Like. It doesn't feel like you're in the late 70s when you use it. It feels Aqua. Therefore it is called like that. You can also use the usual Mac-like shortcuts if you want, plus the Emacs-like shortcuts. I think is the best, that's why I use it. Anyway, if you don't like it, you can use iTeXMac, LyX, Scientific Assistant, TeXMaker, TeXShop and TextMate.

With Mac Os X, the native format is pdf. Therefore I suggest you to compile directly in .pdf, because dvi-preview is not very spread around. Compiling in pdf means that you can use .jpg or .pdf images. To produce the latter, Carlo suggests Intaglio + LaTeXiT . Tips on how to use them can be found here, and both the software are present in the Mac in the printer room and in the Mac in the meditation corner. If you want to use LaTeXiT on your Mac, don't forget to install Ghostscript. A package ready to install can be found here.

How to display .pdf file created with LaTeX? You can stick along with Mac built in Preview, or you can use the much better (for .pdf) Skim, which will also allow you to take advantage of the SyncTeX technology. To see how to do it, read this page.

SSH

I work sometimes at home, and I find annoying I can't surf some sites which can be surfed only within the Lorentz network. If you don't want to mess around with the Terminal, and if you don't want all web traffic to go through the tunnel, I suggest TunnelerX + Firefox. You may even want to run Mathematica via an ssh tunnel. In that case you'll need a terminal; just write ssh -L 16286:rulhm2.molphys.leidenuniv.nl:16286 ssh.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl and launch Mathematica. When it will ask you the location of the network license, type !localhost (with the !) and you'll be able to work (as long as the terminal remains open).

Virtualization

We need sometimes to have a Windows or Linux virtual machine. There are three programs, two shareware, Parallels and VMWare Fusion, and one freeware, VirtualBox. As use the latter, and I think it is great because it's free, and because I don't miss any feature of the other two.

Act without doing

What I really love about mac, is that I can do more with less effort, so that I can concentrate more on what is actually important. A great application that helps me is QuickSilver, a launcher, which allows to do tons of things amazingly fast. The developer site is available here.

General utility

• People wil try to tell you that Mac apps don't install anything more than a directory, the app itself. That is not true, there are also some preferences and support files around the library. To remove them easily use AppCleaner.
• Decompress .rar files: unrarx
• Check gmail every x minute, without installing additional things (like the official gmail notifier). Written in ruby, very nice: gmail notifr.
• Sometimes, with audio cd, the optical drives will make the cd run so faster, that it will be unpleasant to listen to anything. To overcome this problem, you can use discrotate
• Quicktime is quite unuseful for all the bunch of video files it can't read. But it can be teached to handle almost all video files (also subtitles) with Perian.
• With neoremote you will be able to use the Apple Remote to give presentation with your Mac.
• Safari is not the best browser, for a series of limitations it has. But it's darn fast, and I love it, and now more than ever with the new version 4.x. Therefore I installed Glims to have inside it everything that I missed from Firefox. It could be that you need more, but hey, Safari is the fastest browser on earth, you can't have everything.
• Some lucky guys have a laptop with a multitouch trackpad. Too bad Apple doesn't allow us to define some shortcut for swipe left and right, up and down with three fingers. Thanks God Will Henderson created multiclutch, a software that does precisely that. Now I can navigate through my browser tabs without moving arrows, but just swiping left and right with my fingers. With Snow Leopard, however, multiclutch doesn't work so well anymore, therefore a user created from it BetterTouchTool , which I think it's great! It also adds support for the Magic Mouse.

Unix Software

If you want to install Unix Software, you can use Macports or Fink. The latter will install Unix Software packaged from someone else, the former will compile from source, taking care of the dependences, and allowing you to specify compilation option (like the Gentoo package manager). For that reason, I like Macports the most.

Photography

I own a Nikon D80, and I shot RAW. If you also shot RAW, I think iPhoto is quite slow and it doesn't offer so much. I bought, through surfspot, the program Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, which handles things much faster than Apple Aperture, even though it feels less Mac. It has Camera Profiles built in, like camera manufacturer software, localized editing (we can make darker or lighter only a portion of the shot, hide that cable which ruins the photo, and so on...), and a lot of other very nice stuff that will save you a lot of time. But..if you shot jpg, just forget it and use iPhoto.